The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life [Ideas in Context Series].

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Reprint ed.. Paperback octavo, very good plus condition. 340 pp. Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues describe how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last 300 years. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance, to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Recurring themes include determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, and the shifting meaning of probability - but in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists in the history and philosophy of science, but also at the general reader and scholars in other disciplines. (A secondhand POD copy.)